


corpus callosum

by themikeymonster



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Not Much Drifting But Lots of Talking About it, Superheros aren't a thing, The Drift (Pacific Rim), demisexual Matt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 01:27:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4415804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themikeymonster/pseuds/themikeymonster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How in the hell do you control a Jaeger when one pilot is blind? No one's really sure, but Matt's pretty determined to try - if he could just find someone Drift-compatible with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	corpus callosum

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [ these posts](http://spiritsflame.tumblr.com/post/119335576729/ok-but-matt-and-foggy-as-jaeger-pilots) on tumblr

* * *

 

 

No one wants to co-pilot with a blind man, no matter what his scores are on the simulations.

Or rather, no one _can_ co-pilot with a blind man. Anytime Matt tries to drift with anyone, his way of seeing the world? It's too foreign - it's frightening. He's in the Drift-but-he's-not, listening to the jackhammer of their heart as they plunge head-first into everything that he knows, everything he is. They can't handle it. They don't have his training, his years of _being_ like this, they suffer like _he_ suffered when his eyes first went dark and his senses over-compensated -

(They think it's because of the Kaiju. Kaiju Blue. Maybe it is, Matt doesn't know and doesn't care. The _why_ is insignificant compared to the _is_.)

Of course, it took adjustments to even get the simulator to even work for him. They'd had to study the Kaiju ever closer, the Jaegers, implement things they'd never even thought of before. But once they did -

Which doesn't matter. Even Matthew Murdock couldn't pilot a Jaeger all on his lonesome. "Your brain already works overtime to adjust for your senses, Matt," Claire says, soft and gentle but unwavering, too. Her heart beats: truth; Karen doesn't contradict her, and her heart agrees, and -

And they believe in him so much already. Claire had only asked once: _are you sure?_ And since then does not doubt him when he tries to drift _one more time_ . She and Karen had been the driving force behind adjusting the simulators to even give him a _chance_ \- Karen worked long and sleepless nights with him to adjust them and rewrite the code to give him the same footing every other pilot -

He bloodies his fists on punching bags (until he could identify their location by smell alone) because he's used to it - used to the world that is always stacked against him, but that doesn't mean he likes it. Doesn't mean he _accepts_ it. He never will.

(He'd break the world in half if he could.)

\--

Matt in general pays little attention to the new arrivals; there's not a lot of point in it - friends are few and far between, when his sense are so good that he learns people almost as well as their drift-partners without even going under with them. It spooks the hell out of them, drives them away. He doesn't really care. He has Karen, and Claire, and most days that was enough.

Still, it's helpful enough to learn who is who, so he pays _that_ much attention -

It actually takes him three days to notice the guy. Well, not _notice_ him, because Matt notices everyone, the pattern of their feet and the hiss of their breath and the thrum of their heart. This guy wears a cologne that would have annoyed Matt before he'd discovered worse smells (Kaiju Blue) - he wears it faint, though, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

Matt mostly doesn't _act_ blind, despite the fact that he's stopped bothering with glasses that break too easily, and has gone with just tying a bandana over his eyes. He doesn't bother _acting_ blind, because he mostly isn't, can sense the shape and hear the muffled spots in the hallways where others were standing even if he couldn't hear their breaths, sense their body heat.

Matt doesn't _act_ blind, the way he used to, so people often don't _treat_ him as blind, they forget that as much as he can compensate for being down his eye-sight, the average human being depends _so much_ on it. He lives in a sighted world, and he - simply _isn't_.

It takes him three days to realize that the guy with the faint cologne identifies himself when he comes in the room, and speaks up when he's leaving. He talks about what they're looking at on the screens, on print-outs, the things that Matt would normally have to ask Karen or Claire about later. He reacts to expressions and gestures verbally and it's not until Matt comes upon him talking to Karen that Matt realizes that's not the guy's normal method of interacting with people.

For three seconds, Matt's pissed - because as hard as life was, that was just the way it was. He didn't ask for special consideration, didn't ask for things to be made easier for him, he gets along just fine -

(A voice that sounds like Claire's, tired and sharp: _no, you don't_.)

And then Matt starts paying attention.

\--

Matt pays attention the way that everyone always hates (this is test number one). He learns the pace of Foggy's steps, the sound of his breathing, the way his skin whispers against cloth to make this or that gesture. He learns what makes Foggy's heart beat faster, which ends up being more things than he can count; Foggy is a man who likes things, likes people, likes the pilots and the Jaegers (and Matt). He learns what it sounds like slowing down in repose, in slumber, listens to the sound of his snores down the hallway.

Foggy's the only one that seems to remember that he's blind (that's false; Karen and Claire remember, but they always wait for him to make welcome their help), and so Matt takes advantage, pretends he doesn't notice Foggy, and measures their steps against each other when Foggy moves to the side to avoid running into him. Matt learns the cadence of his words, how his mouth warps around vowels and trips consonants off his tongue and teeth. The constant, good humored up-tilt of the things he says, like a smile made audible. Probably a smile made audible, Matt thinks.

Karen likes the pilot that Foggy's there to manage, so it's no difficult task to follow close by into the cafeteria. Karen plucks his cup of pudding off his tray and switches it for her serving of vegetables like she always does, has been doing, and Matt quirks the same not-smile he always does because he's not exactly wild about carrots, either, but at least they're a little sweet. "You don't eat enough," Karen says.

Toward the end of lunch, Foggy says "here," looking to pass him an apple (fingers against slick skin, the bland smell of it, the fact that they even _have_ apples anymore a blessing) and Matt doesn't look up when he says, "toss me it." (This is test number two.)

Foggy hesitates, a bare second, and then he does. He lobs it so that it couldn't possibly hit Matt, but he _does_ throw it; Matt catches it easily, arches his brow, and sinks his teeth into it.

(Foggy's heartbeat skyrockets.)

\--

"Tell me you are not going to seduce that poor boy, Murdock," Claire says, because there's a division of labor when handling Matt, and he knows it. Karen prefers to be his unquestioning moral support, and Claire doesn't have the time or the inclination to sugar coat her words. It works out.

"Seduce? No," Matt says, and he's not even actually lying. It's fifty-fifty with pilots, if they successfully drift. If they weren't already friends or family, that sudden intimacy could sometimes launch them into a sexual relationship. Matt's been thinking about it a lot, but he still doesn't know what he thinks about it. It's not something he's ever given a lot of consideration to, before, but -

If - if. He thinks they'll work it out in the drift - _if_ he can convince Foggy to try. Foggy's not a pilot, after all, and Matt doesn't think he's even had the training, or if he _wants_ to - if he'd be willing to climb into a Jaeger and -

"Matt," Claire says, quiet and stern, "I need you to be careful."

He breathes, and hears a dozen things said in those few words (he knows people as if he's drifted with them without even attempting a neural handshake). He bites the pad of his thumb before he even realizes he'd been rubbing at his mouth (his clothes too soft, too worn, for what he needs against his fingers).

"I don't know how to be careful," he says at last, because it's true, it's true in all the ways that Claire means.

She breathes as he breathes, does not sigh though he thinks she'd like to. She says, "you're going to have to learn," and her heart says: truth.

\--

Matt says: "hold the bag, would you?" (This is test three.)

Foggy does, and Matt starts off light, with short punches that barely make contact. "Why boxing?" Foggy asks, holding the bag steady; Matt leans into the punches, letting them connect more, connect _better_ . "I mean, each to their own and stuff, but other than being in relatively good shape, strength itself isn't really all _that_ necessary to being a pilot."

He exhales on each strike anyway, but for a second Matt thinks he might have actually lost his breath. No one ever actually _calls_ him a pilot (he isn't one, technically; he has the training, the scores, but he can't steer a Jaeger, can't actually be a pilot). Even Karen only refers to it in future tense.

Leaning his knuckles into the bag (leaning into Foggy by proxy, he's aware - because he _wants_ to), Matt says, "it's in my blood. My Dad was a boxer, before - well. Before. He kept it up even after he became a pilot." It still hurts to think about his Dad - probably will never _stop_ hurting. It's been five years and he still lives with the loss every day. There are no set of feet or lungs or a heart that would ever match that of Jack Murdock. None could ever bring him the same sense of _home_ , of _love_. He aches every time he pulls out the ripped remnants of his father's suit and they don't smell like him anymore.

"I can get that," Foggy says, pauses then adds lightly, "you work out a lot, huh." He sounds like he's saying more than just an observation, but for all that Matt knows Foggy now, he doesn't know him well enough to read anything more that it's not a come-on.

He breathes, and then he says, dryly, "Claire says my coping methods have coping methods," because he has to try, he's got to learn someday even though he needs to know today, _now_ , here with Foggy.

"Right," he says, and it doesn't judge, and: "okay. We'll start with the fists, and then we'll work up from there, okay, buddy?"

His face twists, and he says, "okay," and he doesn't even realize that he's smiling until Foggy's heart skips a beat.

\--

Foggy doesn't want to be a pilot - fighting isn't in his blood the way it's in Matt's, the way it's in a lot of people's. Foggy hates the Kaiju as much as most of them do, but it's still not _in_ him, the need to pick up arms and lay his life on the line. There's nothing wrong with that because the world needs gentle people (maybe Matt more than most, but -).

"It's not about fighting them, Foggy," Matt says, "it's about making them stop. There are innocent lives at risk - families who get destroyed. Do I want to kill them? _Yes_. Yes, I want to kill them -" He can't lie about it, not if he wants Foggy to even try. If they commit to a neural handshake and Foggy discovers his lies there, it would ruin everything. "I want to kill them," he says, "because I want them to stop."

"I'm not a pilot, Matt," Foggy says, "I don't have the training - I've never even gotten into a fist fight with someone! I couldn't if I tried - I literally can not engage in conflict, I am - like, the defuser man, I defuse situations, I don't escalate them."

"I can fight enough for both of us," Matt promises; he can, he knows he can, even if he doesn't know _how_ he knows, he just does. "I can handle that - it's the rest I can't, Foggy. I need you to see what I can't, to think of the things I _don't_ . Will you - will you just _try_ ? Just - try to drift with me. No one's succeed before, and the rest is moot without it. That's the quickest way of settling this, just -" _please_.

"I can't believe you," Foggy says, but it doesn't sound like 'no'. It sounds like 'yes', and this time Matt knows he's smiling when it happens, before Foggy's heart even begins to patter, and he thinks he likes the sound of it.

\--

(He tells Foggy about them - his senses, how he sees the world. He moves beyond 'a world of fire' and explains that he knows what it's like to be sighted, that his world is true-black as the darkest night. The world is on fire because it licks against his hypersensitive skin in shades of searing-hot-warm-cool. He explains how he knows the dimensions of the room because of the air-currents - or lack thereof - and how the sound echos. How he recognizes people by their breaths, how their posture and health affect the frequency, the volume. How he counts heartbeats, because if he's very diligent and focuses close enough, everyone's heart beats just _slightly differently_.

"If you hear your own heart in the Drift, you can't freak out," he says, because that's been the sticking point so many times - he knows intimately how alien his memories are to sighted people, about how it was dangerous to chase the RABIT but how they drown in his sense like he once did. Foggy says, "in the _Drift_ ? I'm freaking out _right now_ ," and it's true, but Foggy also says, "alright, I get it, let's just do this thing."

Karen and Claire stand by, and Foggy's self reaches out across the neural link and Matt?

Matt reaches back.)

\--

They are Right and Left, and the Jaeger _moves_.

\--


End file.
